Wednesday, July 31, 2013

The BEST Stand Alone Fantasy Novel--Round Two

Sure you can win when everyone has afifth vote to throw away.But I think The Mists of Avalonwill spank you when every vote counts.

I'm home from Vegas and first thing's first. Round two of our poll!!

The poll itself is at the bottom of the left hand "widgets" (the menus, ads, share buttons, and such that run down the left side of the screen).

For round two, everyone only gets four (4) votes. With five votes, everyone has one or two left over to give to The Princess Bride. But will it do so well against The Mists of Avalon when people have fewer votes? We shall see!

And be careful. The poll is still pretty long. It may still longer than your screen depending on your resolution, so there may be more choices if you scroll down.

Remember, the nomination process has concluded, so if you think it's a travesty that something you would consider to be the best fantasy novel ever is not on this poll, feel free to leave a comment, but the poll itself will stay as it is. HOWEVER I encourage you to stick around as A) I'm pretty much always running some kind of similar poll (we'll be doing horror next), and if you care that much, you might actually like it here, and B) fantasy will eventually come back around and you'll have the chance to get in on the nomination.

With round one concluded, I fleeced the bottom four performers from the list--everything that had only gotten one or two votes. For round 2 everyone gets four votes (yes 4), so you can make sure several different titles get some love. At the end of each of this week (one week from Wednesday) I will trim down between two and four more choices (the actual number depending on ties) that have the fewest votes and reset the poll.

Then we'll do round three with only three votes each.

I'm doing this to minimize some of the affect that passers by have. "Changing the Creepy Guy Narrative" is still bringing in a lot of demographically atypical readers, so only the people who keep coming back each week will really be able to influence which titles move on to the next rounds. For the final poll we should have somewhere between seven and ten titles and two votes each.

Here are the books that didn't make it through the first round. They will be receiving some lovely parting gifts.

The Hallowed Hunt--Bujold
The Trope--Bennet
Into the Dream--Sleator
The Twelve Kingdoms Sea of Shadow--Ono

9 comments:

I feel as though I must go on record about how much I despise "Mists of Avalon." I think I really only participated in the poll in order not to vote for it. I read it as part of an Arthurian legend course and found its claim of feminist to be wildly at odds with so many of the "I was aware of how he looked at my legs as I climbed the mountain ahead of him" vomit-inducing drivel that I nearly chucked it across the room on multiple occasions. Whew! I feel better.

I really doubt you could count the Harry Potter or Narnia books as being "standalone". They do make complete sense as separate narratives, however they are part of a series. So, I am surprised that "The Hobbit" never made the nominations, let alone any of the books in Zelazny's Amber series. There is also nary a mention of Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz or anything by Feist. The lack of a single Diskworld novel is an indelible stain on the accuracy of this poll.

All I did was set up the poll and the rules. The nominations came from readers, but I don't find them stained, indelibly or otherwise. I told them any book that COULD stand alone would count and left it to their judgement. The Hobbit and Diskworld aren't on there because no one nominated them.

Also, I wouldn't normally correct you on something like a misuse of a word, but as you used scare quotes and you generally seem to be the sort who would like to get your vocabulary correct, "stand alone" and "standalone" are different modifiers, the latter referring basically only to electronics. While you might see the dual word separated with a hyphen ("a stand-alone novel"), the single word wouldn't be accurate to use when talking about books--not in standard usage anyway.

Edited because I'm guessing your scare quotes were to emphasize "stand alone," not to correct me.

No arguments here. I use and abuse language, but I (usually) know what I'm doing when I do so. I'm a fan of a certain level of pedantry. It makes me think of a sort of "intellectual Bushido" or something when someone strives to be precise with their words. Plus I need to be kept in check because I'm terribly lazy.

I only take umbrage when that quest for precision is projected out onto others as a gauge of intellect or morality or something funny like that. That's why I may have seemed snippy in the firs)t reply, but then I checked myself when I realized you weren't correcting me. (So...uh...sorry about that.)

About the Author

Chris Brecheen is just this guy who loves to write. He's been doing it for thirty years, and even got a degree in Creative Writing that now covers a hole in his drywall. These days he focuses his pretentious, hackneyed tripe on this blog, which is two teaspoons magical journey, one cup of advice given as satire, a dash of talking cat, a splash of personified ideals, a (very) healthy dollop of pervy candor, eight heaping tablespoons of toeing the knife-edge line between irreverence and blasphemy, diced guest bloggers who live inside his head (and a couple who don't), a sprinkle of words used pretty much with the express intention of keeping prudes offended in perpetuity, regular Star Wars, Star Trek, Firefly references, at least one doomsday plot per season, and a slice of pressed milk curd provided by the weird guy who lives on the third floor. Add three or four sprigs of social justice and simmer.

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